“When we’re talking about the whipping of
slaves, you’ve got to show it. What does it mean to be strapped to a post and
beaten? This is not the time to turn or shut our eyes” - Steve McQueen, Film
Comment

The above quote from the September/October
issue of Film Comment underscores the brutality that’s exhibited in Steve McQueen’s
new film, 12 Years a Slave. Brutality,
perhaps even embellishment of that brutality, may be the overarching element to
McQueen’s filmography but shying away from the despair of reality has never
been on the director’s mind. Instead, it’s that very subject - coping with
despair - that makes McQueen’s films so intrinsically human. Whether it’s the
political and spiritual discourse at the heart of Hunger or coping with the despair of social isolation through
sexual release in Shame, McQueen has
proven capable of conveying the very nature of suffering. Though it’s in 12 Years a Slave where this despair and
suffering is funneled through a historically-inclined depiction of socially
acceptable and politically justified behavior - essentially providing an ideal
introduction to McQueen’s worldview.

The sensory overload at the start of 12 Years a Slave illicts confusion but
is done as a means of conveying the arbitrary nature of its character’s
suffering. Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is first seen as the title
indicates: as a slave. But McQueen very carefully positions Northup throughout this
brief montage as a man surviving a prolonged ordeal. It’s all in the title
where the very concept of time comes into play. Otherwise, much of the opening
of the picture functions as something of a stream of consciousness, whereupon
Northup is moved from plantation to plantation, attempting to acclimate to new
structures and masters. When narrative is introduced, whereby the audience
understands the fact that Northup was a free man who was abducted and placed
into slavery, it’s done so in a blunt and conventional fashion. McQueen
establishes fact with surgical attentiveness, carefully constructing scenes of
cerebral impact. Like Hunger and Shame, 12 Years a Slave may as well be considered a picture of carefully
constructed scenes, all intimate in detail but loosely tied. It worked well in
all of his prior films, but 12 Years a
Slave serves as his finest example, in large part because his screenplay
(written by John Ridley from Northup’s recount) accepts that, like memory,
putting together a detailed account of a 12 year period is often recollected as
pieces and fragments. In 12 Years a Slave,
these fragments convey a state of duress, effectively capturing horrifying
imagery that carries visceral, cerebral, historical and sociological
significance.

David
Denby of The New Yorker has already staked a claim that I wholeheartedly agree
with: 12 Years a Slave is the
best film made about slavery. Competition is light on this front, unfortunately.
Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained offers
perhaps the best counterpoint to what 12
Years a Slave achieves, but the differences in their tonal approach and
recounts of history (or in Django’s case - anti-history) serves as
two wholly different experiences. Other films, most notably Steven Spielberg’s The Color Purple, cushion or completely
omit the brutality of the time, opting for grandiose emotional flexing without the
brawn to back up its narrative. What McQueen achieves in 12 Years a Slave is a testimonial of a singular perspective and the
surrounding forces that impose their social hierarchy upon him. The whole
picture has the work of a craftsman exposing a world’s betrayal against a
population, never accusing and more often than not, pensive in his approach.
But in the final minutes of the picture, everything crashes down in an
emotional crescendo of unprecedented power. Screening for the first time in
Chicago, the picture left many in tears, others completely stunned so as to
remain seated long after the credits closed. McQueen, in his third feature, has
crafted a masterpiece.